Blood Libel, One More Time

Caroline Glick draws a parallel between the American Left’s attacks on Sarah Palin and the Israeli Left’s attacks on conservatives in that country. As usual, Ms. Glick argues her case well:

For Israelis, the American Left’s assault on Sarah Palin and the conservative movement in the wake of Jared Loughner’s murderous attack in Tucson was disturbingly familiar.
Just as the American leftist media and political leadership immediately sought to blame Palin, the Tea Party and conservative media personalities for Loughner’s actions, so in 1995 their Israeli counterparts accused the Right — from then-opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu to various rabbis to the two million Israelis who protested against the so-called peace process with the PLO — of being responsible for Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. …
Palin’s characterization of the Left’s appalling assault on her and her fellow conservatives as a “blood libel” was entirely accurate. Moreover, as her previous use of the term “death panels” in the healthcare debate brought clarity to an issue the Left sought to obscure, so her use of the term “blood libel” exposed the nature of the Left’s behavior and highlighted its intentions. …
In the case of her use of the term “blood libel,” Palin exposed the Left’s attempt to criminalize conservatives and make it impossible for conservatives to either defend themselves or pursue their alternative policy agenda. … Just as its Israeli counterpart did in the wake of Rabin’s assassination, so the American Left seeks to attach a sense of criminality and violence to the American Right in order to make it socially and otherwise unpalatable to support or otherwise identify with it.
By calling the Left out for its behavior, Palin exposed its agenda. But the logic of the blood libel remained. Trusting the public’s ignorance, and the liberal Jewish community’s solidarity, the leftist media in the U.S. immediately condemned Palin for daring to use the term, hinted she was an anti-Semite for doing so, and argued that by defending herself, she was again inciting violence. …
It matters not whether these conservative thinkers support Palin. What matters is that by telling her not to defend herself from libelous attacks, they are accepting the Left’s right to criminalize all conservatives. If she is not defended against a patently obscene effort to connect her to a madman’s rampage in Tucson, then conservatives in the U.S. are signaling they really don’t want to control U.S. policy.

I agree with that last observation, which is why we, along with many others who do not necessarily support Palin as a potential Presidential candidate, have defended her against the Left’s iincreasingly over-the-top attacks.